Threat of flood loomed large over many districts of Odisha on Monday as water level in many rivers continued to rise due to incessant rains in many regions for the third consecutive day.
The rivers that were on the rise include Mahanadi, Kathjodi, Kusabhadra, Devi, Baitarani, Subarnarekha, Budhabalanga, Vansadhara, Rushikulya and many other small rivers, according to the State government’s Water Resources Department.
A top official of the Water Resources Department, however, said that there was less threat of a major flood hitting the districts in the Mahanadi delta as release of water from Hirakud reservoir was being managed carefully. As many as 17 gates were opened at Hirakud as against five on Sunday.
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Though Mahanadi was flowing over the danger level on Monday evening and over 10 lakh cusecs of water was to flow at Mundali, the official said that the situation may go out of hand if heavy rains continued in the region.
On the other hand, heavy rains in north Odisha had caused floods in Budhabalanga, Subarnarekha and other small rivers.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik reviewed the situation at a high level meeting at the State Secretariat here and directed Collectors of as many as 12 districts where flood situation had arisen due to heavy rains across the State.
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The districts that were alerted to stay prepared to meet any eventuality include Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda, Cuttack, Boudh, Nayagarh and Keonjhar.
In fact, many areas in these districts had already been cut off with rains damaging roads and inundating vast tracts. Bhattarika temple in Baramba area of Cuttack district was partially submerged on Monday due to floods in Mahanadi.
The Chief Minister directed the district administrations concerned to ask people to move away from low lying areas to safer places and make arrangement to supply cooked food to the people in flood affected areas.
Mr. Patnaik also directed the authorities to provide help to the hundreds of people who had been affected due to flooding caused by heavy rains in Sambalpur town, where the situation had started improving.
Meanwhile, the Meteorological Centre at Bhubaneswar said that heavy to very heavy rainfall was likely to occur at some places in the interior parts of Odisha during the next 24 hours due to a depression in the Bay of Bengal.